Do we look the the Dem ticket? Oh, wait.......
Posted on 03/13/2020 10:43:23 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Astronomers have finally found something they have spent decades searching for: a teardrop-shaped star that pulsates on only one side.
Citizen scientists helped the discovery team find the strangely lopsided star, which is known as HD74423, in data gathered by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). The star is about 1.7 times the mass of Earth's sun, and scientists determined that HD74423's weird pulsing is caused by a second, smaller star.
"I've been looking for a star like this for nearly 40 years, and now we have finally found one," study co-author Don Kurtz, an astronomer at the University of Central Lancashire in the U.K., said in a statement released by the University of Sydney, where Kurtz is temporarily based.
Pulses are nothing new to astronomers; even our own sun's surface fluctuates. But until now, every star's pulses have been visible around the entire surface. That's not the case for HD74423. That turns out to be because the star is a binary star, accompanied by a red dwarf star that is much smaller than our own sun. As the red dwarf whips around its larger companion every two days, its gravity pulls on HD74423. This tug distorts the surface of the larger star into a teardrop shape, also distorting the oscillations.
TESS was able to observe variations in the star's brightness during this distortion. The data was posted on the crowdsourcing website Planet Hunters TESS, where citizen scientists noticed that something weird was happening. Often, fluctuations in a star's light can be traced to a planet crossing across the face of that star — this is the entire premise of the TESS mission. Such fluctuations, however, may also stem from stellar activity, as in the case of HD74423.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
How does that not sound like “The Death Star?”
This star sounds very unstable. Is it running on a Dem ticket?
Are they sure the telescope wasn’t pointed at Biden’s brain?
*ping*
must have a shy side
Everyone needs a hobby.
In before Uranus!
Klingons around Uranus in 3.. 2.. 1..
And the red dwarf circling his head is Bernie?
All kidding aside, this is clickbait. A star cannot be teardrop shaped. They said oh it is weird and shaped like a teardrop all you stupid people who don’t know crap about astrophysics. Then they say oh it really is a binary star system with one of the two stars being a pulsar. The pulsar pulsates in all directions on its equatorial plane while the companion star eclipses it regularly as they orbit each other. The smaller star is probably a neutron star and is probably more massive because neutron stars are the pulsars and are smaller and more dense because they have more mass. That explains why the larger star can eclipse the smaller pulsar and the fuzzy image in the telescope looks like a teardrop because you can not focus at that distance.
Why it took 40 years to find one? Because they don’t last very long. That neutron star is going to consume the larger companion star probably in less than 10,000 years.
Do we look the the Dem ticket? Oh, wait.......
LOL Why, yes, yes you do!
The article says the companion star is a red dwarf. But yes it’s probably a very short-lived scenario, if a few million years can be considered short-lived.
“Often, fluctuations in a star’s light can be traced to a planet crossing across the face of that star — this is the entire premise of the TESS mission. Such fluctuations, however, may also stem from stellar activity, as in the case of HD74423.”
I was telling an Asian lady this just the other day. “Why that star pulse on one side so much” she asked?
“Fluctuations,” I said.
“Fluc you too!” she replied.
Sounds like the Christmas lights my wife puts up every winter, on the coldest and windiest day of the fall. If only she would expect to test each string herself and not bother normal people!!
Won Hung Lo Stars.
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